Discontinued Thermovape Cera

[pakalolo]

Do yourself a favor and buy a jewelers loupe (magnifying glass). Less than 10$ on Amazon or your local Wally World.
This will allow you to visually see the THC crystals on your ABV. If you're going to be Vaping it's the best 10$ you can spend.
Oh yeah,welcome to the forums!

Thanks for the info guys. I'll get a jewelers loupe and see how it goes.

I agree that a loupe is a handy thing to have to examine your buds. I like doing it so I also bought a cheap USB microscope solely for looking at buds. You won't find anything left of your trichomes but stems, however. The nice little heads have all been vaporized.

 

[Sonics420]

Sounds like something is wrong. If after four minutes, you had zero vapor, and the switch on the bottom was hot enough to burn you, it sure sounds to me like the switch or spring or something down there is high resistance. (But, of course, I'm just guessing). Maybe you have a defective bottom switch. Is the Cera ceramic body in the middle (halfway between the core and the bottom switch) hotter or cooler than the switch? Thanks for letting us know what TET suggests.

the middle area is about the only place i can hold the cera without being uncomfortably hot.. ive also noticed the area between the ceramic and SS are the main spots that get hot enough to basically pinch me.

 

[OF]

the middle area is about the only place i can hold the cera without being uncomfortably hot.. ive also noticed the area between the ceramic and SS are the main spots that get hot enough to basically pinch me.

This is sounding like a switch issue, but can we please try to do this systematically and bring the PM conversation here?

I think troubleshooting this step by step as a group as far as we can might be very helpful to others as well as trying to fix this specific case?

I'm thinking we're never getting step 1 right???

Anyway I suggest we 'start with everyone on the same page'.....

TIA

OF

 

[Sonics420]

For sure OF. Here we go again, fully charged battery - Getting steady same glow @ 4-5 seconds


Just got a call from Zeki also, I am sending my cera back in because they believe it can be a faulty body.. Said they might have to rebuild the body ect.. I asked him if other Cera owners had this issue and he said yes [cera getting too hot/no vapor].. So I will send off my Cera today.. I just got this bad boy too lol

I will still be able to go step by step with you OF if you would like to

 

[GReYAReA]

Thanks. At the risk of saying something stupid and obvious.....something's not right.

Let's go with the WF-188, I know that one, please verify the slide switch on the right is in the down (3.7) position.

TIA

OF

Yep, of course.

 

[OF]

Yep, of course.

Good, don't want to get caught there....it's happened before.

OK, how long does it take the LED to go from red to green? I assume you're using the high current, not that it should matter past time.

TIA

OF

 

[Sonics420]

I never really timed it because it was on red when i went to bed, then green when i woke up. i did pop in a battery and used it for 4 minutes earlier, put it back on the charger and it took about 20 minutes to turn green.

OF
i went to step 2, power inhale and exhale x2, got some vapor.. and flavor, its ready to go
step 3, slow steady inhale for 15 seconds, pretty good hit but a lot of work.
but this is my first session with the Cera finally, it gave me consistent vapor even though it wasnt much for about 3-4 minutes. i feel a nice buzz..

by that time the body is hot to the point where i get burned..may be faulty as suggested by Zeki, if all that heat can stay at the core I should be getting the amount of vapor Noah/Buchee did in their videos??

edit-checked my abv and it was pretty cooked..


went ahead and kept testing, i got another good session. [same steps, shorter pre heat though since it was warm already]

everything seems to work good with that paperclip mod that was posted, i think with the foil it wasnt pinching good between the stainless lip..i got very good hits this time for about 5-6 minutes straight and im very high right now.

my only issue is how hot the cera gets.. and thats going to be looked at. Also it would be tough to go for back 2 back sessions by pulling the MP off so it would be a good idea to have the glass mouth piece IF you can take it off the cera from the tip of it and not get burned.

 

[OF]

I never really timed it because it was on red when i went to bed, then green when i woke up. i did pop in a battery and used it for 4 minutes earlier, put it back on the charger and it took about 20 minutes to turn green.

OF
i went to step 2, power inhale and exhale x2, got some vapor.. and flavor, its ready to go
step 3, slow steady inhale for 15 seconds, pretty good hit but a lot of work.
but this is my first session with the Cera finally, it gave me consistent vapor even though it wasnt much for about 3-4 minutes. i feel a nice buzz..

by that time the body is hot to the point where i get burned..may be faulty as suggested by Zeki, if all that heat can stay at the core I should be getting the amount of vapor Noah/Buchee did in their videos??

edit-checked my abv and it was pretty cooked..

Great. I'm having a little trouble following this but it sounds like you ran about four minutes which should have been say 4 times four Amps per minute for 16 'Ampere minutes', divided by 60 gives us just over 1/4 Amp hour. Our charger replaced that at one Amp for 1/3 hour, which seems close enough for jazz.

Once you're stable at the end of step 1, you want to now transfer the heat up to the load. To do so you need to draw outside air into the core to heat then pull it up through the load to move the heat up. It only moves in a useful way by airflow and 'time's a wastin' since everything is getting warmer and the battery is getting flatter. So, once it's stable and hot (step 1) start a couple 'medium fast' full pulls. Say 15 seconds to fill your lungs up? You should feel and taste the change, but even if you don't, do a 'test puff'. Puff a bit of the last air you got (hopefully with some vapor in it) out and look at it. You want a visual confirmation of vapor. Don't settle for wispy, you want a solid test puff or pull 5 or so seconds and try again. Don't compromise, you want hot and pretty darn quickly.

Once you get that solid test puff, blow out what you have in your lungs. It's weak anyway, dump it.

Then, now that it's up to working temperature, honk on it for step 3. The harder you pull, the more hot air comes in to make vapor. Go ahead, try to outrun it if you've a mind to, it shouldn't cool the fire off too much.

The trick, I think to the system is 3 distinct steps. At first be very conscious of them. Very quickly they will become second nature. You'll just know it's still hot enough from the last hit it's already at step 2 and no test puff is needed for instance. Or take the test puff and see for sure.

Anyway, sounds like you've got it on the run. Good going, keep after it, it'll tell you the secrets one by one.

OF

 

[OF]

On the QC thing...If you look just above your post quoting my post you will see that Tim said the following - "There was a small batch of switches that were out of spec and couldnt handle the Amperage, when they fail they become a large resistor and start getting hot. There are still some out there in the wild with them, but we can easily send out a replacement if that seems to be the case."
Now I'm no QC god, but I'm sure you will know more on this subject than me...surely there must be a QC problem if those switches managed to go out to customers.

No, I don't agree. There might be a QC problem at the switch maker.....I fail to see how a switch that tests OK in the unit but fails in service is a quality control issue with TV. They didn't make the switch, they did install it correctly and test for function. What past that would you expect QC to be inspecting for?

There may be a Quality Assurance issue over time with using switches from that maker for TV, but that's not QC nor is it really part of this.

It's an easy shot to say 'they obviously have a QC problem' but here I'm not sure you can give an expmple of that. By 'best manufacturing practices' they're doing it right near as I can tell.

OF

 

[GReYAReA]

Good, don't want to get caught there....it's happened before.

OK, how long does it take the LED to go from red to green? I assume you're using the high current, not that it should matter past time.

TIA

OF

It tends to go green right away; or very quickly. Yes, I use the higher current.

Thank you for the help OF!

 

[PB88123]

If people report the switch is too hot in a short amount of time TV could keep the device on for 5 minutes and check the temperature of the device before boxing it up. If the switch area is too hot they know they have a bad switch.

But it sounds like from what Tim has said the problem has been fixed and the remaining switches out in the wild will be swapped out.

We'll see once the new batch comes out and people report back.

 

[GReYAReA]

OK. new test.

Battery 1 dead. No red core in Cera. Popped it into charger 5:00PM 3.7v 650 mA. Light red.

Battery 2 dead. No red core in Cera. Popped it into charger 5:04PM 3.7v 650 mA. Light red.
edit: Battery 2 turned Green 5:09PM.
edit2: No red in Cera. It is possible I never got a red core on this one.

 

[OF]

It tends to go green right away; or very quickly. Yes, I use the higher current.

Thank you for the help OF!

You're very welcome of course, but thus far all I've done is ask a couple obvious questions that so far haven't told us much.....

Onward!

OK. new test.

Battery 1 dead. No red core in Cera. Popped it into charger 5:00PM 3.7v 650 mA. Light red.

Battery 2 dead. No red core in Cera. Popped it into charger 5:04PM 3.7v 650 mA. Light red.
edit: Battery 2 turned Green 5:09PM.
edit2: No red in Cera. It is possible I never got a red core on this one.

OK, now we're moving a bit I think. Seem to me like a good charger dealing with two charged batteries? That is it cycles and treats two identically so I think the charger is OK and the chance of two bad batteries is small indeed. One might have secretly vented and dried out (say) but not both.

Let's poke a bit at Cera. Let's start out with the idea that the switch can be dead? Easy to test, stuff some foil in where the end cap goes, you need enough to connect the bottom of the battery with the inside wall of the threaded collar. No need to be dainty, stuff some in and see if you get some heat in the core (either by looking at it or feeling after ten seconds or so....gently, of course.

OF

 

[GReYAReA]

You're very welcome of course, but thus far all I've done is ask a couple obvious questions that so far haven't told us much.....

Onward!



OK, now we're moving a bit I think. Seem to me like a good charger dealing with two charged batteries? That is it cycles and treats two identically so I think the charger is OK and the chance of two bad batteries is small indeed. One might have secretly vented and dried out (say) but not both.

Let's poke a bit at Cera. Let's start out with the idea that the switch can be dead? Easy to test, stuff some foil in where the end cap goes, you need enough to connect the bottom of the battery with the inside wall of the threaded collar. No need to be dainty, stuff some in and see if you get some heat in the core (either by looking at it or feeling after ten seconds or so....gently, of course.

OF

I'll try to dig up some foil shortly. Here is the thing though. If my previous experience holds, Battery 1 will turn green very soon. I'll be able to get one good bowl off this one.. then it'll die also...

 

[OF]

I'll try to dig up some foil shortly. Here is the thing though. If my previous experience holds, Battery 1 will turn green very soon. I'll be able to get one good bowl off this one.. then it'll die also...

That's significant for sure.....the batteries are not performing the same then....that puts them right to the top of the list I'm thinking. Why the difference.

I agree, hold the foil test, let's see if the batteries track. Good call.

OF

 

[Haywood]

I hate to get involved in what is one of the best remote control diagnostic discussions I have had the pleasure to read, but I gotta ask GReYAReA (boy that's hard to type), is there any chance you have either a voltmeter (or DVM) or a flashlight that uses 18650 sized cells there? If I understand OF's direction, he's trying to figure out if you (A) have bad batteries, (B) have bad charger(s), or (C) have a bad Cera. If there's any way you can "test" the batteries besides in the Cera (or charger), it would probably go a long way in figuring out the solution to your problem.

Just a thought; and trying to help, not confuse...

 

[Quetzalcoatl]

All I'm gonna say on the battery thing is this:

The charger I got with my Ultra... kinda sucks! It's really finicky, I have to position the batteries properly otherwise they'll read "green" even if they're not fully charged. Move them a bit, get the stuff lined up right, and they'll fall into red and charge properly. I've been meaning to get a new charger heh.

 

[SameOldTim]

Hey all!

Batteries came in nice and early and we were able to send out a ton of Cera's!

A big thanks again to NoName for swinging by and helping us get packaging ready! Forever grateful!

Cheers,
Tim

 

[Haywood]

the middle area is about the only place i can hold the cera without being uncomfortably hot.. ive also noticed the area between the ceramic and SS are the main spots that get hot enough to basically pinch me.

Since you're going to send it back to Zeki to have things checked out, there's really no need for me to try and further diagnose things; I think you've chosen the proper response in sending it back to the people who made it, since they know more about it, and what can go wrong, than I ever will. Plus they can fix it or send you a new one, neither of which I can do.

I still suspect a high resistance problem in or near the switch, as I can't imagine anything else that fits your description of the middle being the coolest spot, as the only significant source of heat is supposed to be at the top (the core), and how could that radiate to the bottom without heating the middle on the way? While the battery gets warm from pumping out four amps, it doesn't get too hot to hold, and it doesn't get hot unevenly.

my only issue is how hot the cera gets.. and thats going to be looked at. Also it would be tough to go for back 2 back sessions by pulling the MP off so it would be a good idea to have the glass mouth piece IF you can take it off the cera from the tip of it and not get burned.

With a properly working Cera, you should be able to get amply medicated before the Cera gets uncomfortably hot. Very warm at the end of a session, yes. Too hot to hold, no. OF was making extreme tests when he got his first beta Cera, and 15 or 20 minutes continuously on was what it took before he was uncomfortable holding the Cera anymore. A normal session for one would be more like a minute or two warmup at most, then a few priming hits at 30 seconds each, then how ever many full hits you want to take at maybe 45 seconds or a minute for each inhale, hold, and exhale. You add them up. Five big hits should take all of 7-8 minutes from a cold Cera (with a charged battery). If five hits aren't enough, another five hits should take all of another five minutes. That still works out to roughly half the time it took before OF said he had to put the Cera into to his pocket due to heat. So my advice is to not worry about how hot things are getting until you have worked things out with TET and have a 100% working Cera.

The mouthpiece is another story though. I love the glass mouthpiece, but remember it's glass, not magic. It doesn't actually touch the core (on either the T1 or the Cera), but it's really really close (~1mm) to it, and you're sucking hot air through it, so it's gonna get hot. Not hot like the core, but you gotta let it cool down after every bowl (which happens naturally since you gotta take it off to refill the bowl...). You're also gonna want a screen if you use the glass mouthpiece; I recommend titanium due the disturbing taste I find when using a stainless steel screen. (Personal thing)

 

[OF]

Since you're going to send it back to Zeki to have things checked out, there's really no need for me to try and further diagnose things; I think you've chosen the proper response in sending it back to the people who made it, since they know more about it, and what can go wrong, than I ever will. Plus they can fix it or send you a new one, neither of which I can do.

I'm not sure I'd rush right out and send it back. If you check his last post (1882) it seems like he's getting better results now with hopefully more improvement to come. Well done AVB is a pretty reliable sign things are going well.

Perhaps refinement in technique will eliminate or at least fully define the problem?

It's of course S420's call, but IMO if progress is being made you should continue to press on.

OF

 

[Sonics420]

I did about 3 sessions today all less than 4 minutes and all gave me an extremely hot switch, the cera was too hot to hold after about 4-5 minutes each time.. its weird cause the battery isnt even hot i can take it out and hold it..its jst the area where the switch meets the body..

My Cera should be there Saturday so if you want you can go look at it LOL, i asked them to test it all out for me.. Im sure mine was one of the batches with a bad switch. Who knows how long the guy before me held onto the Cera before selling it to me?

Either way, my arsenal of vapes should keep me happy. And this time when i get the Cera itll have the EO which is what i was really buying the Cera for the whole time..

 

[GReYAReA]

I hate to get involved in what is one of the best remote control diagnostic discussions I have had the pleasure to read, but I gotta ask GReYAReA (boy that's hard to type), is there any chance you have either a voltmeter (or DVM) or a flashlight that uses 18650 sized cells there? If I understand OF's direction, he's trying to figure out if you (A) have bad batteries, (B) have bad charger(s), or (C) have a bad Cera. If there's any way you can "test" the batteries besides in the Cera (or charger), it would probably go a long way in figuring out the solution to your problem.

Just a thought; and trying to help, not confuse...

No, nothing of the sort. Battery 1 is still charging.. Been over 2 hours. Starting to wonder if Batt 2 is just bad and kind of messed up my rotation. I'll report back when Batt 1 hits green.

 

[GReYAReA]

Speaking of, Battery 1 just went green. So 2.5 hours @ 650mA from dead to "full" charge. I'll use it tonight and report back its battery life.

Edit - no red core. Strange. It went red last night on this battery...

Edit 2: Tried the foil. Both batteries fire up just fine. I appear to be having intermittent switch problems. Sending back. Thank you for all the help guys!

 

[hooperbell]

"Anyway, over the course of 20 minutes (OK 19 minutes 51 seconds) I took say two hits a minute? I'm not exaggerating here, it never left my hand, it was easily two dozen hits. Because I was hitting it so lightly in terms of flow rates, flavor lasted a very long time. At 8 minutes in I noticed that while I could start to taste the nutty taste of some of the bud getting well done, I could also detect the original Trainwreck taste. Just a bit, but it made the hit seem more fresh than it would be otherwise. The last hits were potent. Not huge clouds of course, but substantial and easy to see in the noon time sun. No doubt about it, it was producing when I keyed it off. Not because it was done, but because I was. Off a tenth of a gram!! It was also getting impossible to hold onto. I was hanging on the last inch of the body and the metal end cap before I carefully pushed the button off and set it down." OF

To be honest that looks more like a metaphor about how high you were off a tenth of a gram than a statement about the device getting hot (but I guess I was wrong) . In any event you should try to be more specific in your future TV beta testing about how hot these wonderful things get. Surely no one wants to get burned (pun intended)

 

[havealight101]

you should try to be more specific in your future TV beta testin

Wow man, he's done enough and was honest about it. I had no surprises when my cera was received because he was so upfront about his testing. He doesn't beta test for us, he tests for TET, and thankfully they allow him to be open about it.
Thanks ol'man, your work is appreciated around here.